Lift and Separate

Survey day arrived... 

With the ready ease that comes from lifting hundreds of boats for hundreds of similar inspections, the hoist engineers prepared the slings, shoved her by hand into the wet dock and proceeded to crane all 5 tonnes of her straight out of the water with no more ceremony or fuss than if she were a pallet of bathroom fittings being offloaded from a Jewson’s lorry to a building site.  

I stood there watching from the side of the dock. She swayed gently in the strengthening breeze like a giant marble in an industrial-sized Newton’s Cradle.   The operators were so matter-of-fact that I had no concern at all – in fact I realised that to them, toilets is exactly what she was - a valuable and fragile but entirely pedestrian consignment to be delivered intact to her destination.

In this case her destination was 30 meters ahead of where she started.  They revved-up, beeped like a Morrisons’  lorry reversing out of a country cul-de-sac and rolled gently up the tracks before depositing her onto her keel on the hard-standing.  This is known as a lift-and-hold. 

Job complete they slipped away for a cup of tea and a B & H.

External inspection involved scraping anti-fouling paint from her hull to ensure a clean contact surface for the moisture meter, hitting her with a hammer to test her bass response, grasping her shafts and bearings and examining them for movement in an inappropriate plane, and abrading her through-hulls looking for signs of de-zincification which looks like a made-up word because it is.  (Like its distant etymological cousin Morgenmuffel - a disposition to morning grumpiness - this compound word encapsulates its own meaning comprehensively, and I am confident that I need offer no further clarification.)

She passed all these indignities with colours flying, though she wept a little from her rudder due to a hairline fracture that will need an epoxy repair in due course.  If I sound like I know what I am talking about then that’s because I don’t.  I have a lifetime of experience of pretending to know something about something and a simple technical issue like “Osmosis of the GRP Sandwich” presents no serious challenge to a county-class bullshitter like me. Anyway - bollocks have always been in the ear of the beholder – people want to believe what they want to believe and attempts to shine a light into dark corners are often resisted.

This is the reason Derren Brown has been repeatedly overlooked for a Nobel Prize.  

It is also the reason that we are buying the boat with no attempt to get the vendor to mend the rudder.  To us she is perfect and hairline cracks are no part of that fantasy. 

I trust when we come to sell her we will find some similarly deluded individuals to pay for her.